clarification re: absorbing PPE from ley line nexi

[Meneliki]

Hi,

Was just looking for a bit of clarification regarding a Ley Line Walker absorbing PPE from a nexus point. So the book says a line walker can absorb upto 40 PPE per melee when at a nexus point. I always took that to mean *during combat*... so each melee round, you could supplement upto 40 PPE worth of casting from the Ley Line. But then I read a Q & A on Palladium's site regarding absorbing energy. Someone asked the question:

"I have a question concerning magic users in the rifts rpg. It says men of magic and also dragons are like living P.P.E. batteries able to absorb energy from ley lines etc. What I'm wondering is if there is a limit to the amount they can take and also how long they are aloud to retain that extra P.P.E.. Is it any different for dragons also?."

Answer: Mages (and magical creatures) can absorb up to three times their normal limit in P.P.E. Most borrowed P.P.E. can only be held for a short period (the mage's P.E. attribute in minutes) before dissipating.

If I'm reading this correctly, that means that out of combat, a ley Line walker at level 1 with, say, 150 PPE... could spend a couple minutes at a nexus and effectively swell his PPE pool to 450 for (P.E. minutes) ?

Thanks

[Shark_Force]

Hi,

Was just looking for a bit of clarification regarding a Ley Line Walker absorbing PPE from a nexus point. So the book says a line walker can absorb upto 40 PPE per melee when at a nexus point. I always took that to mean *during combat*... so each melee round, you could supplement upto 40 PPE worth of casting from the Ley Line. But then I read a Q & A on Palladium's site regarding absorbing energy. Someone asked the question:

"I have a question concerning magic users in the rifts rpg. It says men of magic and also dragons are like living P.P.E. batteries able to absorb energy from ley lines etc. What I'm wondering is if there is a limit to the amount they can take and also how long they are aloud to retain that extra P.P.E.. Is it any different for dragons also?."

Answer: Mages (and magical creatures) can absorb up to three times their normal limit in P.P.E. Most borrowed P.P.E. can only be held for a short period (the mage's P.E. attribute in minutes) before dissipating.

If I'm reading this correctly, that means that out of combat, a ley Line walker at level 1 with, say, 150 PPE... could spend a couple minutes at a nexus and effectively swell his PPE pool to 450 for (P.E. minutes) ?

Thanks

depends on how you read it. it could be a pool of 450 if triple is the amount they can store up to. could be 600 if triple is the amount they can store from the ley line, while still potentially having their own personal pool.

but generally, yes. you can store up a large amount of PPE and hold it for a while with no particular plans to spend it.

[Meneliki]

Thanks for the reply. That certainly opens up a lot more possibilities for Line Walkers. The higher level spells suddenly feel so much less out of reach.

Base PPE + Amulet + Mana Orb Spell Thing + Absorbing From Ley Line + maybe a few volunteers(willing or not) = high lvl spell happy land.

Thanks again.

-M

[Voodoolaw]

I have always liked that the Palladium system allows for the trope of the novice spellcaster who can learn a spell that is well beyond his ability to control, unleash it, and then have to deal with any consequences.

[Axelmania]

Regarding the "in combat" idea, any objections to having that cost at minimum 1 melee action to absorb that PPE?

[dreicunan]

I'm pretty sure that answer was given under the RMB regime of PPE from ley lines and Nexuses (where you could draw x amount of PE per level and the extra PPE was normally available in terms of every 12 or every 6 HOURS). The same clarification about up to triple normal max and for PE in minutes was given in the book of magic, which was still under RMB PPE when originally published. My main point being that when originally given, it would have been dang hard for a low level wizard to get that much extra PPE without a special event like an equinox or solstice just from a leyline or nexus, whereas under RUE being able to grab extra PPE every round means that they can get 80 ppe per minute on a ley line and 160 a minute at a nexus. I'm not disputing whether or not it is canon, just noting how differently that plays under the current regime (to say nothing of the buff Ley Line Walkers got to starting PPE)!

[Shark_Force]

the more recent mysteries of magic book gives a limit of 50% more than your usual max (ie if your normal max is 100 you can fill up to 150) for PE in melee rounds, and up to 600 times your level for 1 melee round.

that said, it is a palladium fantasy book, which explicitly does not have the same amount of ambient magical energy as rifts earth. it also has some extra rules for ley lines and especially ley line nexus points that are not found in RUE. YMMV, but personally i think there's probably a balance element in play here - in rifts, technology really lets non-magical people shine a heck of a lot more than would be possible in palladium fantasy. in PF, a carpet of adhesion will pretty much always work on typical PCs, for example; in rifts, someone could be a dragon, or piloting a 30 foot tall robot vehicle. in palladium fantasy, a 4d6 fireball with a range of 500 feet is extremely impressive. in rifts, that's an extremely short range laser rifle. in palladium fantasy, they make a big deal of magic pigeon being able to reach most places in a mere 4 days. in rifts, with a good enough radio and someone willing to act as a relay station, you can have two-way direct speech communication to anywhere on the planet with a time lag of less than 4 seconds.

in short, in PF you need to worry that the wizard is going to overshadow everyone if you give them access to loads of PPE. in rifts, the glitter boy pilot can kill things in one shot from 11,000 feet away... things that the "wizard" would have ran out of PPE before managing to kill if they didn't have one of the more efficient damage spells. and that glitter boy's boom gun has far less range and damage than a volley of short range missiles, never mind medium or long.

[Axelmania]

More clarification's needed there though. Is the 600xlevel in addition to base? In addition to the longer-term 50%?

It sounds like a boost for the low-powered but a nerf for the high-powered. Previously with the 3xPPE stored for PE (even when hours was reduced to minutes) a level 30 god with 100,000 PPE could store 300,000 but now only 180,000 ?

[Curbludgeon]

This is on page 22.

It reads to me as the most favorable interpretation. The 150% personal is held within the caster, while the 600/level is rechanneled from elsewhere immediately, with the caster serving as a connecting conduit. In the case of ritual magic, the 50% has to have been gathered by a method independent of the ritual, otherwise the use of any PPE outside the ritual's specific result will cause it to fail.

[Shark_Force]

More clarification's needed there though. Is the 600xlevel in addition to base? In addition to the longer-term 50%?

It sounds like a boost for the low-powered but a nerf for the high-powered. Previously with the 3xPPE stored for PE (even when hours was reduced to minutes) a level 30 god with 100,000 PPE could store 300,000 but now only 180,000 ?

the 600/level i think matches up to the absolute maximum you can get from a ley line nexus during a conjunction or something like that... so i'd be inclined to assume it's in addition, and is intended to let you actually hold the amount you can draw for long enough to do something with it.

but once again, it is a palladium fantasy rule. hard to say whether they intended it to apply to rifts. there are vastly different balance concerns, and palladium fantasy explicitly has far lower magical levels. if you think of it as being like pressure, consider that pressure *difference* is what causes problems and the "magical pressure" (for lack of a better way to put it) in the atmosphere on rifts earth is much higher, which could mean that you can also safely store more inside yourself, and for longer.

(it could also very easily not mean that, though... we have precisely zero information telling us whether "magical pressure" is even a thing, as far as i know).

[Axelmania]

How would this interact with that PPE-tapping deific power?